Behind locked doors at a municipal building in the Ottawa suburb of Orléans, Tony Bailetti is quietly working on a plan to turn Canada into a global powerhouse for fighting cyberattacks.

The professor is known for nurturing more than 200 companies in his job straddling Carleton University’s business and engineering departments.

These days, he jokes that he practically sleeps at VENUS Cybersecurity, a non-profit hub he created in a former town council office.

Bailetti is preoccupied by much more than malicious software nabbing credit card data from retailers like Target.

His eye is on big intrusions — the idea that cyberattackers could take down power grids and water systems, or remotely take over control of cars from their drivers.

And his goal is to have Canada “playing with the bigger boys and girls” to tackle the global problem of cybersecurity in fewer than five years.

“The people who have investments in critical infrastructure — we will be the go-to guys,” Bailetti said.

‘Bell-Northern Research of cybersecurity’

VENUS Cybersecurity was announced to great fanfare at a press conference at Ottawa’s City Hall in November 2013.

Politicians boasted that VENUS would create much needed jobs in the eastern suburb — and Bailetti has done that, though these are no run-of-the-mill jobs.

He has assembled some two dozen bright minds, many who have PhDs or are graduates of Carleton’s technology innovation management program. Some do research and development. Others conduct tests offsite.